This book is clearly one of the best vocabulary references available for helping students learn to define and describe.

Defining and Describing helps you teach a simple format in which to set up the definition of a person, place or thing.

Hearing someone ask for a definition or reading the word define cues us to organize words into a particular pattern. By the time students are in second or third grade they’re ready to define nouns by identifying the class in which the item belongs and naming characteristics that make a particular item unique within its class.

This book helps you teach students to use this pattern:

A (item being defined)

is a (name of superordinate class, category, etc.)

that (characteristics of the item that make it unique within its class)

Lists of items by category are presented to enable students to learn the similarities of items belonging to a particular class, and to learn the name of the class.

vehicles

entertainment

animals

jobs and careers

useful things

foods

tools

Example of activities to teach similarities and differences among items within a class:

Lists of descriptive terms are presented to help students tell how an item is unique in its class or simply to describe an item.